Quiet Life III: Summer Days
by Maeve Riannon
Summary: Part three of the Quiet Life series (about Kenshin and Tomoe´s life with their daughter). SECOND CHAPTER UP: Kenshin has to free his ki and Miyoko and him have a serious conversation.
1. Nightmares and Medical Visits

**Note: **Though this happens after, it was written before Quiet Life II. ;) It´s two chapters long (again) and focuses on Kenshin´s problems. About the timeline, it´s supposed to happen almost three years after the other (the corresponding season is summer). Thanks to all who reviewed the other story.

Disclaimer: Kenshin and Tomoe belong to Watsuki.

Special thanks to Margit and Aaerdan.

Quiet Life II: Summer days (1876) 

**I: Nightmares**

Night had fallen long ago, heavy and without moon, as he found himself walking the streets of Kyoto. A distinct smell of fresh blood came from the alley he had just left like a silent shadow, ready to melt with the other shadows and to disappear in the darkness´s secure embrace like one more of her creatures. He turned on his heels, instinctively wiping the inexistent red stains from his hands…

…and suddenly felt the light touch of a presence behind his back.

_Damn._ he cursed to himself, after the fraction of second that he needed to process the information. He had been followed. They were behind him.

_My sword!_, he thought frantically, his hands fumbling with his obi in search of a weapon. He couldn´t believe this was happening to him. That carelessness was unheard of, he had always been able to perceive people long before they started to threaten him with their proximity! This hadn´t _ever _happened to him. Surely it couldn´t be…

The presence became more evident behind him now, silent and breathing in his back. It seemed suspiciously that it was enjoying his discomfort too much to press the advantage, as if it was sure that he had no chance. His sword… If he only had his sword…

But, he found in that precise moment to his horror, no one of his swords were in their place.

_I am dead._ Realization came upon him slowly, but steadily. He did not know how they could have disappeared all of a sudden, but who cared, confronted with the glaring fact? Words, that had been spoken to him long ago, started to resurface now in his mind, mocking him with their undeniable truth.

_"Once  they have got behind you…"_

_"Bare handed you´re a real disaster, baka deshi!"_

_"Start to say your prayers…"_

Still, he thought then, to run with his back unguarded, and a presence behind him who, apparently, did not waver at all, did not appeal to his common sense either. Maybe his unknown enemy was just expecting him to run in order to launch his attack.

_Or maybe…_

With the strength of mind of dire desperation, Kenshin quickly devised some semblance of a last plan. He would mask his ki, and then turn back slowly, as if he was frightened, dazed or wanted to surrender. If he could make his enemy gain confidence and lower his guard, he might be a real disaster bare-handed and all, but at least he would be able to place a kick well with his Hiten Mitsurugi godlike speed.

"Kenshin…." a voice called him from behind. His head fully set for his plan, however, he paid no attention to the anxious tone, or to the words …or to the fact that it was a voice he had heard plenty of times before now. Keeping his breath, he turned back in a rush….

_"Shinta, please, stop!"_

And his eyes were opened wide at the mention of that name by the woman who was breathing heavily in his grasp.

"Tomoe!" he cried out, astonished. As he was trying to recover his senses, a bright and warm light irrupted in the sinister scenario, and the pair of hazel eyes that he had seen before were set on him again, filled with concern and worry. He felt himself falling, falling deeply into an abyss of sunlight, until he was back on his disheveled futon, with the woman he loved firmly pinned under his body. "I´m sorry…"he muttered, still dazed and embracing her. "I´m so sorry. I was…"

"Shhh", Tomoe cut his apologies. Before she could even add something else, his desperate embrace left her without breath, and she had to concentrate her efforts not to suffocate.

"If I had had my sword I might have killed you", he stammered several times, in broken realization. "Even now…"

"My love…" When the pressure became somewhat less strong, her hands softly made their way to his shoulders, and she even forced herself to smile in the middle of a gasp. "Oh, my love. Even now… what? You… you  don´t sleep with your sword anymore… since many years ago. That´s a great difference."

"Not enough", he muttered despondently. "Never enough."

"I´m sure it´s enough to matter. But, my dear… the dream you were having, may I ... could I share it with you now?"

As Tomoe had imagined that would happen, her husband shook his head determinedly. He never told her what he had dreamed about, and this, on the one hand, was completely unnecessary, since she could imagine the subject of his nightmares well enough, and the intensity, the horror, was something she wouldn´t understand even if he tried to tell her. But, on the other, she would wish that he gave in even once, and shared his pain with someone just for the sake of it. Once she had ceased feeling the need for revenge, fear had taken its place, and indecision, and many other reasons that had forced her to stay quiet and hidden, but the only reason he had to hide his own things now was a keen urge to shelter her, and that she couldn´t stand.

_She has enough problems already_, he was thinking meanwhile, swallowing down his need to flee from the bed and do something, anything, to forget what he had just experienced. It wouldn´t be proper to leave her alone now, he **had **to force himself to lie back and press her head to his chest. After all... what was new? Hadn´t he had nightmares before, and plenty of times, even so many years after the Bakumatsu?

Suddenly, though, as he was thinking in this strain, a sudden shift of a presence disturbed him once more, and made him open his eyes wide. Tomoe threw him a puzzled look almost at once, but, as soon as he realized what it was, he relaxed and calmed her with his touch.

_Someone has just made his way to the hole behind the screen_, he said to himself with a grin, feeling his troubles somehow dissipate in the wind as if under the effect of magic.

"I do n…" Tomoe started, even more puzzled than before. "What..?"

"Miyoko-chan," he whispered in her ear. To his amusement, his wife´s face was flushed instantly, and she couldn´t suppress her anger.

"Miyoko!!!" she cried, sitting up once more on the futon and pushing the covers down. "I know that you´re there!"

"She has just arrived," Kenshin was careful to clarify before the thing could get worse. "She´s extremely easy to sense."

Admitting her defeat, their daughter appeared at that moment from behind the screen, the guilty look in her face not enough to suppress the delighted smile that was dancing on her lips. Yes, it was evident that she had just been in time to catch their fondling… once more.

"S… sorry. I was just trying to..." she started, fidgeting with her hands. Tomoe´s eye twitched.

"You´re _far _too clever, Miyoko-chan," she grumbled, struggling to her feet. "But now, come on! You´d better cease adventuring and get dressed soon, for we´re going to leave early today. We have to accompany your father to visit Matsuo-san."

"Really?" Miyoko´s smile widened almost at once, and it was with a jump that she left their presence. She loved to go out and visit people, especially if there were children, and Matsuo-san had two daughters that were slightly older than she. Kenshin remembered very well the happiness, the _life_ that glowed in her face whenever she played with them.

"Nosy little imp…" his wife kept grumbling as she put her shawl on to leave so that he could change. Kenshin smiled once more, this time a conciliating smile while he unfolded his kimono on top of their bed.

"Well, I think I´d better go now and prepare something quick for breakfast," she announced, collecting her things. "Oh, and, by the way, "she added before disappearing behind the screen. "I´m glad to see you´re… feeling better." 

Though it was evident that the sign was lost, the red haired man pressed his lips together, and nodded fervently.__

*     *     *     *     *

"Ten minutes, all right?" 

As Kenshin took the cooking pot under his supervision, and saw his wife walk quickly behind the screen he had just emerged from in order to change in turn, he wondered what exactly had happened while he was still behind it to make such a calm lady so stressed. The fire had been clumsily ignited, the rice had a bit too much water, and Miyoko was sitting on the floor with a somewhat sorry expression.

"We could not find my left tabi," she explained with a forlorn voice. "I tossed it too high last night…and we were searching for it until Mother started to take the rice out from the bag."

"And where was it?" he asked distractedly, trying to decide at the same time whether to add more rice to it or to throw off a bit of the water. In the end, he opted for the first, noticing that it was too small a quantity to begin with.

"In the rice bag," she answered, just when he had introduced his hand in it. As he instinctively let the grains he had caught slide between his fingers, she gave a deep contrite sigh, and shrugged her nose. 

"I… I can wash it, if you want."

**II: Medical visits.**

It was a wonderful day, Kenshin couldn´t help but think, once more, as he turned a furtive glance at the cloudless blue sky above his head. Birds were singing in the branches of each tree, the sounds of people´s voices entwined with them when the breeze carried them from the distance, and the air was as warm as it rarely could be in such a usually cold place. Behind him, at a short distance, his wife and his daughter were also forgetting everything to look in the same direction as he, enchanted with the mood of the day, and Miyoko even got so distracted for a moment that her doll escaped her grip and fell some meters down the slope. Kenshin slowed his pace instinctively as soon as he noticed it, in order to avoid tensions.

"Give me your hand, and let´s hurry," Tomoe admonished the girl in a whisper once she had successfully fished her doll back. "And don´t let the doll go. We´re slowing your father down!"

"I´m in time," he reassured them, falling once more in his normal stride. No answer came to him, except a tiny girlish whisper that he wasn´t able to decipher very well. Then, silence and quiet reigned again in their small group, until at last their steps took them to the main and practically only street of the small village, and to the people who were walking there.

 "Good morning, Himura-san!" a group of men who went to work at the fields greeted him. "Goin´to work early, aren't you?"

"You know that Matsuo-san had an ugly thorn deeply imbedded in his foot yesterday", he explained briefly, after answering their greeting with a bow. "I have to see how the wound is progressing."

"The wound? Sheesh." One of the men turned to the others, and began to give them some kind of explanation that involved a continuous use of his hands. "It was a little prick at first, I was there when he gave the yell. He said it was alright, but then it began to swell, and swell, and swell. When we brought him back home, Yomo-san almost killed us…!"

"I think he´s better this morning", a third one remarked, scratching his chin. "Didn´t hear weird yells in the middle of the night. Anyway, tell him that we asked you about him, okay?"

"Okay, I will" Kenshin nodded seriously, then bade them goodbye while suppressing a smile. He felt better with them at each passing day, almost to an extent that he was starting to forget how painful it had been at first to be surrounded by peaceful and innocent people to whom, in a way, he was lying. Right now, though he couldn´t say he was one of them, and both his wife and himself looked too weird and aloof for those people to socialise with too often, he knew that his hard work had convinced them long ago that he was someone they could trust, and who would help them freely and without second intentions. He had been working with them, not only healing their wounds and their colds, but also accompanying them in any imaginable job, since more often than not his money was too scarce for surviving. Several years ago, he had even participated in hunts and killed wolves, and even though there they had seen him doing some things that he shouldn´t have done in front of them, they had been already too convinced of his good intentions to have any misgivings about him. 

_Oh, yes, blissful ignorance_, he mused with a sad chuckle. Sometimes he had to confess that, beyond guilt and repentance, it was simply liberating, if in a selfish way, that not _everybody_ in Japan thought him a monster. Even if this implied that he was surrounded by people who hadn´t heard about him at all. 

 "Good morning, Himura Shinta-san!" Matsuo-san´s wife cried, as soon as she opened the shoji enough to see who was there. "Come in, come in! We were expecting you…"

"We did not arrive too late, I hope…" Kenshin mumbled awkwardly. The woman then seemed to realize the implication of her innocent words, and shook her head with fervour.

"Oh, no, no! It wasn´t that what I meant. I… well, come in. Oh, you have brought your daughter!"

"Good morning, Yomo-san." Miyoko greeted her politely, while bracing herself for the inevitable torture of the admiring hair pulling and face pinching. In spite of her occasional spying on them, and her custom of tossing her tabi in the most inconvenient places, in moments like that one Kenshin could not help thinking that there was no doubt that the girl was an angel. There was no way in Earth he would have submitted to _that_, and his level of tolerance was already high  enough.

"Is your husband all right?" he asked, at last getting inside with Tomoe and Miyoko at his heels. Yomo nodded with joy.

"We are everlastingly grateful to you, Himura-san. The swelling has almost disappeared by now."

Though he seldom showed his emotions in front of other people by pure instinct, this time Kenshin could not help but sigh of relief. Tomoe perceived his happiness, and thought that so many years of practice hadn´t yet made their effect in her overly scrupulous husband. Still afraid of being overpowered by the circumstances and to fail the whole world… no matter what happened to him, he would never change in that.

"Well…we´ll see, then," he said, motioning her to follow and watching for a fraction of a second how his daughter left with her friends among giggles and laughs.

*     *     *     *     *

As Kenshin checked the state of the wound he had previously inflicted in order to take the thorn and the excretion away, he was very satisfied of seeing that Yomo hadn´t been wrong, and that everything was really, truly, going well. Maybe Tomoe had been right, after all, when she had told him that after several years of practice he had become better and should cease feeling so worried. He still cringed at the remembrance of that family who had died after eating a poisonous plant two years ago, and who, he was convinced, would have survived if he had known what to do, but, alas! he should know better already, and his experience should tell him enough about how damn _difficult _it was to save people in real, earthly life. Who had the legendary hitokiri Battousai saved, in fact, after four years of continuous slaughter?

_An abstraction_. He had saved an abstraction, he answered himself abruptly  while he turned the man´s leg over with care. The abstraction his mind had created to conceal the –_human!_- faces of all those people who had died. And oh, how pitifully incapable he knew that he would be of solving even one millionth of the problems he had created while trying to solve it! He just had to think of Tomoe, his own wife, whom he could make to tell him all the things that crossed her mind except for one. He loved her, and she loved him, but that different, deeper sadness would always be there, making him blame himself for having caused it and for being unable to help now.

_And then, there´s also those nightmares…_

"Do you mind if I tell you how lucky you are with that daughter of yours?" the gruff voice of the injured man killed his musings. At once, Kenshin struggled to change his thoughts and his countenance, berating himself for having got distracted in the first place. How could even satisfaction turn so soon into shame? "She´s a real beauty."

"She takes after her mother," he answered, managing a smile. As he saw how Matsuo started immediately to argue, though, politely listing all the points in which she was the spitting image of his father, that smile soon turned into a real one. "Well, maybe after both." 

_For example_, he thought, since he wouldn´t **ever** have said it aloud, _she will be **shorter** than her mother…_

"If I were you, I´d be marrying her off soon," the man continued, with that sympathetic glance that was customary of men when advising a poor young father who had never had children before. "Suitors will start arriving to your house daily, and they´re a true pest."

"Are there so many young men here?" Kenshin asked, somewhat amused. "Or do you mean that the same one will be coming back every day?"

The man couldn´t help but laugh at this, as gruffly as he spoke, and holding his side.

"Well, if it´s the same one, he´d better be decent!"

"Don´t worry about that, Matsuo-san; she´s too young to have such problems still. As for now…" Kenshin got up, and washed his hands in a bowl. "I´m going to get clean bandages to put them on your foot. Wait for me here, all right?"

"No, I think I prefer to climb up that mountain over there, running." Matsuo snapped back ironically. Kenshin shook his head with vehemence before turning away.

_Sense of humour indeed,_ he muttered to himself, closing the shoji behind his back. As he walked towards the kitchen, he had to use his extremely trained and quick reflexes to avoid being overrun by Matsuo´s daughters, who were running towards the door with a ball on their hands. For a moment, he thought he could hear a raspy voice shouting at them from the kitchen, but once he entered there he found all the women silently bending over the small table where Tomoe sat.

"Kieiko-san, Yomo-san, Mayo-san," he said, bowing in polite greeting to Matsuo´s mother, his wife and his eldest, recently betrothed daughter. As usual, they were all watching fascinated how Tomoe wrote their names with the writing tools she had brought, and she was there in the centre of the group, working with sure and neat movements and obviously enjoying every ounce of their attention. When she spotted him, though, she stopped for a moment, and lifted his head to meet his eyes with an inquiring expression.

"I need bandages," he said. 

Tomoe made an attempt to get up, immediately thwarted by Mayo, who went before her. Still, she got up nonetheless, and walked towards him while Yomo discussed the written symbols with her mother-in-law.

"Yomo-san told me that her husband is planning to invite us to stay longer in order to thank you," she said, putting her hair back into place. "She´s going to cook for us, too." 

"I don´t want to impose on them," he declined. Distractedly, he watched Mayo in her movements through the kitchen, and sighed. "I just came to check on a wound."

"She would be so happy..." 

Tomoe´s face was strangely serious when she said this, and, for a moment, Kenshin was surprised at so much passion hidden behind her subdued voice. Even into her eyes, which were now fixed on the window outside in front of which the girls were now playing, he thought he was able to spot flying sparks of quiet intensity.

And he understood. It was not of Yomo that she was speaking of  now, nor of any other of the women who were there with them. It was of Miyoko, playing with her friends under the sun.

_No. _he thought, while he nodded to her and swallowed deeply as Mayo gave him what he had requested. _I do not want her to be like us either._

"Thank you very much." he bowed once more, heading towards Matsuo´s room.

(to be continued)


	2. The Teaching of Compassion

**Notes: **The second and last chapter of Quiet Life III is here, people. Thanks for reviewing. 

I have to make some announcements. First, that I´m writing a third chapter for Quiet Life II. Rememeber, when Tomoe was supposed to tach the children to write. Please, do not get confused with the timelines when I post it. ;)

Second, to supernaturalove. I took your word…well, more or less. I was intending to write of Tomoe in the Bakumatsu, after she was supposed to have died, and I´ve written it. But asking me to write about misundersandings is never a good idea…see "Dead" for details. ^_^

Nothing more and thank you very much!

Disclaimer: The characters belong to Watsuki. Thanks to Margit for beta and Aaerdan for editing.

**Quiet Life III**

**III: Demons of the Past.**

"Did you have fun today?" Tomoe asked her daughter as they walked back home. The sun was low in the sky, and this made the trees project deeper and longer shades on the irregular path they had taken. A colder air than that of the morning was starting to hurt her cheeks slightly, and she could now hear the birds singing a different kind of songs than those of the morning, this time to aid each other to find their way back to their nests.

"Yes! Lots of fun!" Miyoko cried, hugging her doll to her chest. "We were playing hide-and-seek with Yoshi, the son of the shopkeeper, and I got behind him while he was counting. When he ended and started to look, he bumped into me and he had such a funny face! He did not even react in time, and I won. The other girls laughed a lot, and made a lot of comments about his funny face. They said he had turned totally white…"

Kenshin could not help but chuckle at the interminable outburst. Even before turning back to check it, he had already foreseen that his wife would carry a quiet but glowing smile on her face as she listened to her daughter´s explanations, but now that he knew, he found himself unable to keep himself from looking back over and over to see it again. Soon, he would trip and fall like a careless idiot, he mused to himself.

"And, do you know what?" Miyoko continued after a brief pause to catch breath. "They also asked me things about you and Father!"

"About... me and your father?" Tomoe repeated, suddenly sounding worried. Kenshin slowed his pace a bit, too, as he felt his heart skip a beat. "What did they ask exactly, Miyoko-chan?"

"A stupid question!" the girl answered, shaking her head. Kenshin stopped wholly now, waiting fearfully for the answer.

"Which stupid question?" Tomoe insisted once more.

"They asked that how it came that you were older than him," she revealed at last,  shrugging her shoulders. As the red-haired man found that air was entering his lungs normally again, the first thing he did was to inhale deeply and avidly. 

Then… he had to laugh.

"And what answer did you give to that _remark_, Himura Miyoko?" Tomoe grumbled, her relief masked by her annoyance. Her daughter shook her head again.

"That it was because you were born years before him, of course!" she snorted, petulantly. "The question!"

If Kenshin hadn´t used all his legendary self-control to keep his mirth to himself then, as he thought afterwards, he _would _have tripped and fallen like a careless idiot. That he did, and kept walking as if nothing had happened, only made him think higher of himself than what he had in a while.

*     *     *     *     *

Once they had reached their home at last, and Tomoe had begun to prepare dinner aided by a little girl who wasn´t planning on shutting up anytime soon, she did not look too surprised when Kenshin went to the back of the house and took his most precious and dangerous belonging out of its hiding place. Her only reaction was to throw a long glance to the haori under which he had hidden his katana, and arranged it a bit so that it would show even less.

"Be careful", she pleaded.

Kenshin nodded, and closed the door behind him. Good, he thought thankfully, there was still enough sun to suit his purposes. It was not that darkness would hinder his endeavours, but he knew that Tomoe would be worried, and, after all, he was mainly doing it for her. If he had been alone after the Bakumatsu, without anybody to love or protect, he would probably have let himself rot until he died, swallowed by his demons. But he hadn´t been… and now, after so many years, he thought more than ever that a peaceful life was worthy of being lived and protected. Whenever he began to have dangerous nightmares and put his loved ones in danger, he had to get rid of his ghosts.

It was a well-known routine by now.

At a brisk pace, the ex-swordsman reached his hiding place of sorts, a clearing behind the small forest next to his isolated house under the mountain. As he entered it, like so many times before now, he abruptly ceased to be Himura Kenshin, the peaceful medicine seller, and the fire burning deep inside his eyes would have scared anyone who had dared to sneak upon him in that moment. Not that there would have been any chance of that, for the student in Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu who had joined the Ishin Shishi and had become known by his astounding skills as the hitokiri Battousai was perfectly able to sense anyone´s presence from a much longer distance.

He unsheathed his katana.

_Become aware of all your inner strength,_ he could almost hear his Shishou´s words echoing through his mind. _Concentrate on it. And, at the precise moment, let it out. _

_Do not think of anything else._

Nodding, as if Hiko really had been there, Kenshin readied himself and got into a stance. His eyes, as the eyes of an eagle, chose and immediately centered on his target, this time a big rock which had been already cleaved at several sides by his previous attacks. His muscles tensed; and so did his mind. 

"Ryu Tsui Sen!" he screamed, making all birds flee from the surrounding trees in a noisy flap of wings. The powerful impulse of his legs projected him high, towards the sky, and from there he crashed down at godlike speed, the air whistling in his ears, towards…

…_His victim…_

Kenshin staggered, losing his concentration in the fatal moment when his sword landed on the rock and broke it down in a thousand splinters. His head was spinning, and in his mind, suddenly, everything was blood. Then, a groan escaped his lips, and that same everything turned into pain.

_Baka deshi._

Hiko didn´t know a thing, his pupil thought vengefully as he rolled on the floor, clutching his injured leg. He could bet that he never had had to plan a graceful landing while haunted by the memories of hundreds of murders. That was something that would even have killed other people, the life that he had chosen to follow since he had left that mountain…

_See? Baka deshi indeed!_

_Well, so I am_, he confessed sourly at last, to himself and to Hiko, as he got up once more. _So what?_

Somewhat ashamed, Kenshin shook his head to chase away abandon those weird conversations with himself, and began a conscientious attempt to be more effective the next time. He had to concentrate. Concentrate. Rid himself of his warrior spirit freely, without boundaries or cares. He was alone …

"Dou Ryu Sen!" he cried, shattering the earth with his mighty blow. This time it worked better, and he could notice a weight being taken off his spirit as he rested his body and his soul rejoiced at the perfection of the move.

"Sou Ryu Sen!" The part of the rock that had been severed before was now split in two, and the two pieces crashed against trees at opposite sides of the clearing. He was feeling the effect now; all his pent-up ki was being freed by those attacks, and he was beginning to be more and more aware of the exertion. More moves came and went afterwards, in a continuous dance, first tiring him, then wearing him down to his last breath.

_Harmless._

It was the only way, he thought sadly, during a single moment in which he allowed himself a brief distraction. The only way he had ever known.

*     *     *     *     *

Half an hour later, after having ended his performance with a Hi Ryu Sen that left his katana imbedded up to the hilt in a tree, and having retrieved it with his last forces, Kenshin stumbled and fell to the ground, limp and exhausted. At last… For a long while, he knew he would be in peace, and no nightmare would bother him. He wouldn´t be a source of worry and distress for Tomoe.

_He felt freed._

The sun´s last ray disappeared behind the peak of the mountain at that precise moment, caressing his scarred face gently before its departure.

**IV: The Teaching of Compassion**

It was already becoming difficult for him to see things at a distance, when Kenshin perceived a tiny presence getting tentatively nearer to the place. As he could, he pulled himself up with a shiver of cold, and put the sword into its sheath again in the wrong way, as always forgetting that the blade of that sword was reversed. Somehow, or so he thought at times, this could be a metaphor for his fate; to never be able to wholly forget the role that the killing blade had played in his life.

_As if a hitokiri could forget…_

"Come over here, Miyoko-chan," he invited, in a gentle but weary voice. Almost at once, a little girl with a red kimono stumbled out of a bush, and lifted a pair of wide, violet eyes towards him. Though it was becoming a real challenge to see through the thickening shadows, Kenshin could perceive the unspoken questions that lay in those pools, as well as the awkwardness as she patiently waited for him to come.

It hadn´t been even two months ago, when she had known. Tomoe had insisted; the girl was already at the limit of the age where things could be hidden from her without committing a dreadful and often irreparable error, but, in spite of those sound reasonshis inner resistance had been strong. Even more, for a long time he had been convinced that she had acted differently towards him ever since that day, and it had taken Tomoe to tell him that he was imagining things to get into his head that what he had seen was his fears and nothing more.

Or not _much _more… 

"Mother says that dinner is ready," she chirped, considerably more subdued than what she had been that afternoon. She had probably run out of stories to tell, Kenshin thought with an inner smile.

"Then, we shouldn´t make her wait, should we?" Hiding his sword under the sleeve of his haori again, he offered his other hand to her. "Let´s go."

Miyoko nodded, but did not take the hand.

"I´m old enough to go alone," she protested, as if she felt insulted. 

"But you can´t see in the dark, can you?" Kenshin retorted, shaking his head. "It´s dead night now, or will be soon."

As he got no answer, he began to walk past the bushes and trees, and at once felt her panic rise as she was suddenly unable to see him anymore. He stopped to wait for her then, but when she ran towards him she tripped over a root.

"It´s… It´s nothing," she assured, her redness evident for the eye of Kenshin´s mind even if it couldn´t be for the other. Sometimes, he thought ruefully, as he helped her to get up, checked her, and dusted her kimono a bit, her attitude was somewhat of an enigma for him. Being a more or less good child, she had to choose the less profitable occasions to oppose him. 

The second time he offered his hand to her she didn´t dare to protest anymore.

"You see? Sometimes, it´s actually good to do what you´re told," he scolded her, deciding automatically to cease relying on his eyes and use his other senses instead. In spite of his present weariness, he could find his way through anything using them alone, and this had made him terrible indeed as a shadow hitokiri. His aim had been just as good in the darkest of alleys…

"Father…"

"Yes?"

The girl trotted at his side, her little legs keeping up with his longer ones.

"Do swordsmen see in the dark?"

Kenshin was taken a bit by surprise by that question, though he was fortunately able to gather himself soon. Miyoko was rather quiet compared with the other girls, but even he was aware that some questions at least were pretty much inevitable.

"No. Not in general."

"And you?"

"I do not see in the dark, Miyoko-chan," he answered. "I just feel the things, hear them… and therefore know where they are. It´s actually a bit difficult to explain."

"Ahhh. Oh, and Father… Mother said that nobody must know what you did, never ever, not even my friends," she changed topic then, without the smallest hint of transition. Once they got the cue, children weren´t certainly those to let it go… "But she said that it wasn´t bad. Why do you hide, then?"

Kenshin inhaled air deeply, totally clueless as to how to answer such a simple question. Tomoe was great at putting him in difficult situations, he even thought - unfairly, of course - for the smallest of moments. She and the highly logical mind of his daughter, inherited from he didn´t know whom. So that was what she had pretended before, when she had refused his hand, to act grown up so that he would answer her?

_Why do you hide?_

How the hell could he tell his little daughter why he did hide?

After a brief telling of all his possibilities, tales and lies he could have told her, he could not help but slump back in defeat, just as resourceless as before. He could not lie, but he couldn´t tell her the truth, either. Not yet. Maybe not ever…. 

He chose to stay silent.

"I´m… I´m sorry," Miyoko muttered after a while, misunderstanding his silence. "Mother says that a little girl shouldn´t ask many questions,  but I just keep forgetting it. Are you… are you angry?"

In spite of his worries, Kenshin couldn´t help but feel warmed at this sally. Slowing his pace, he squeezed her hand a bit tighter, to let her know somehow that he was in fact smiling.

"It´s fine, Miyoko-chan. We all have our questions in this life, especially little girls. Unfortunately, there are also things that little girls cannot understand."

"Next month I´ll be eight," she stated, hope filling her voice again. "Will I be a big girl then?"

Kenshin laughed.

"Ask your mother. I´ve never been a little girl."

Miyoko had to laugh at that, too, her father supposed that just at the idea, and for a while both fell silent. The lights of the house where Tomoe was waiting for them were already near, and some of the glow lighted their faces and allowed them to have a better look at each other. Then, Kenshin noticed for the first time that his daughter was still pensive.

"Father," she said again, just as they were going to step into the small field where they sowed  the vegetables. He turned towards her again, curious.

"Yes?"

Miyoko inhaled deeply, looking very flustered for a moment. When at last she opened her mouth, Kenshin could detect a certain shyness in her voice, and he could not help but wonder what it was that was making her so nervous.

"Mother…Mother told me that she had done a very, very bad thing to you once. That, if you hadn´t forgiven her, I wouldn´t have been born. That... was scary."

Kenshin stopped dead in his tracks, astonished.

"Miyoko-chan… When did your mother tell you that?" he asked, slowly.

"When I first saw your sword. Two months ago," she added, with a tiny, tentative smile. The smell of the food could already reach them, in sparse but constant waves, but none of them moved. "Since that day, I… I´ve forgiven everyone for everything. Even Ayumi for throwing my doll into the river."

 "Really?" Kenshin managed to ask, even as he was feeling something unknown twist inside his chest. Miyoko nodded fervently.

"I´ve…forgiven you, too," she muttered, in such a low voice that it seemed as if she was afraid of being heard. Then, before Kenshin could react, she bit her finger and ran towards the house.

*     *     *     *     *

"I promise I didn´t tell her anything about you!" 

Kenshin gave a sharp intake of breath and commanded his tense body to lean back, while still holding the cup of tea in his hands as if for support. Tomoe looked sincere, and she had always been trustworthy… all right, if he excepted their first months together, which were well in the past now. All forgiven, as Miyoko had said. But, still, if it hadn´t been her… how …?

"Then… why did she said that?" he insisted, throwing a surreptitious glance to the screen behind which the girl´s soft snores had subsided minutes ago. "Did she… maybe overhear…?"

"Maybe." Tomoe nodded. As Kenshin noticed then, she was rather calm, nothing in her betraying nervousness or worry. "But maybe I can offer a better explanation."

"Which explanation?"

"Miyoko doesn´t tell people about her feelings very often, but she tells _me_, most of the times," she explained, smoothing a wrinkle in the blanket she was sitting on. "That time, two months ago, she was… scared by what she saw. I know, because she told me, and I told her about myself then. I thought I owed you that much."

Kenshin´s eyes widened a bit, in realization. "So… But...didn´t you tell me that there wasn´t anything strange with her?"

Tomoe lowered her head, and gave a soft sigh.

"I could not stand to make you miserable without a motive. I know Miyoko better than anyone else in this world, and I knew that, with my help, she was going in the right direction. If she didn´t do this by herself… how would she be able to deal with other things later in her life?"

For several moments, none of them said anything else. The only sounds were those of the cracking flames, while both stayed back from each other, plunged in their own musings.

Then, unexpectedly, Kenshin got up and sat behind. He nuzzled her ear, and she looked up to see that he was smiling.

"Thank you."

"Uh?" 

"I told you to teach her compassion. Do you remember?" he asked, an intent look in his eyes that was, at the same time, filled with unfathomable gratefulness. Tomoe felt a thrill running through her body, and her heart started to beat irregularly. She tried so hard to have that glance…

…_To be useful for him and his pain, as he was for hers…_

"It was me who said that," he continued, slowly. "But you, you were the one who did it."

A smile graced her porcelain features as well, and she allowed herself, at last, to lean back on him.

"And yet," she finished with a glint in her eye "it was _you _she forgave, wasn´t it?" 

Unable to withstand temptation any longer, Kenshin strengthened his embrace, leaving his cup on the floor just in time before she suddenly turned back and kissed him with fierceness. Behind the screen, kneeling and with her eye pressed to the little hole, a little girl covered her mouth with both hands, and giggled.

_She will eat him alive!, _she thought, shocked. 

(The end)


End file.
